Untraditional First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt Invented a Role No Successor Has Quite Matched

Article excerpt

WHEN her husband entered the presidential campaign, newspapers
editorialized against her liberal causes. Republicans cast her as a
radical who threatened American values. Critics painted her as a
negligent mother.

She violated every kind of social and political expectation.
While her husband was governor, she pursued a professional career
and stumped the nation in behalf of women's and children's rights.
Big business hated her because she championed the cause of the
worker. Even the FBI kept a secret file on her activities.

Though she and her husband maintained separate private lives,
theirs was a close political partnership. He learned to trust her
political advice. He agreed to bring female leaders into his inner
circle. And he adopted her civil rights stance as his own.

Her name was Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential First Lady
in American history. Columnist, teacher, activist, editor, she
entered Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first presidential campaign as
a well-known political activist. During his presidency, Republicans
red-baited her as a Bolshevik who threatened the nation's security.
Magazines ridiculed the barbecues she substituted for formal
presidential dinners. Still, she outlasted her critics. After FDR's
death, she championed the United Nation's Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and gained the status of elder stateswoman. In her
last years, she chaired JFK's Committee on the Status on Women,
helping spark the revival of feminism.

Hillary Clinton has said that Eleanor Roosevelt is her idea of a
model first lady. It's hard to imagine a better choice. Before
FDR's presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt championed all kinds of causes
many considered un-American: child labor protection, social
security, consumer rights, equal pay for equal work, and civil
rights legislation. According to Blanche Wiesen Cook's new
biography, Eleanor Roosevelt gently nudged FDR in ever more
progressive directions.

Like Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton has been demonized by
the right-wing as a backstage usurper scheming to take over the
White House. …